County, Local Law Enforcement Ask Legislature to Keep Sheriff Programs (VIDEO)

Local and County law enforcement officials filled the seats and lined the back wall of the legislature Tuesday night. County legislators reviewed the proposed 2012 budget specifically looking at the following departments: Probation, Sheriff and District Attorney.

The county face a $52 million deficit and with the probation department, the director said there would be no changes in their operating budget. A was published after this with statements from police chiefs and comments and questions from the legislators.

Probation

“I know that this is a challenging budget here,” said Kathi Tower-Bernstein, Rockland County Director of Probations. “This is the budget that we’ve been operating with. The abolished positions have been vacant. We have been struggling, we have been reassigning and reallocating our resources. There’s really no place else we can go, but we can certainly operate another year with the lean budget as proposed.”

Those positions include two probation officers and one senior probation officer. She added that their greatest asset was their staff and that they had moved resources around as much as they could.

“Every year I look at the budget and I see the salary savings and I wonder where that is going to come from,” she added. “But every year I have (things that) are unanticipated, whether it be retirements or extended sick leaves … Unfortunately, we’ve had deaths on our active staff. We can’t predict where that’s going to come from.”

Legislator Joseph Meyers asked her about the current workload of her probation officers.

“The average supervision workload is approximately 135 cases to each probation officer,” said Tower-Bernstein. “Each investigation workload is about 20 a month.” She added that those working on certain cases, such as those with felons, have smaller caseloads in comparison to those working with a more “generic population.” By law, probation officers must meet once a month with their cases.

The investigation staff and supervision staff are separated with the exception of the sexual offender cases.

“We’re almost the highest (in terms of average caseloads per probation officer). Average workload in the state is about 70,” she said.

DA

“The District Attorney’s office that depends on the expertise of these BCI officers will be in jeopardy,” said Kralik.

District Attorney Tom Zugibe chose not to discuss the proposed budget’s impact on his office as he felt that Tuesday night had a more pressing issue at hand. He was concerned with the proposed budget’s effects on the sheriff’s department.

“Imagine the police responding to the scene and not being able to collect DNA, not having the ability to take fingerprints, take photographs or any of the forensic evidence that we’re all familiar from CSI today,” said Zugibe. “That’s going to make the prosecution of the most violent felonies impossible. It’s going to impact results. You’re going to see cases not commenced because of lack of evidence. You’re gong to see cases lost that were brought in on paper-thin evidence. It’s an essential service, but that was never considered when bringing in this budget.”

 “Think about the warrants squad and their ability to go out and enforce all the county warrants. Think about arson. We have fires every week in Rockland County and our arson squad goes out and decides if it was accidental or was it arson … We’re going to lose all of that.”

Sheriff

county law enforcement officials assembled to warn the public of the serious impacts to public safety if the budget cuts go through and a loss of 50 years of law enforcement advancements.

Last night, Sheriff James Kralik took the floor along with police chiefs from across the county and Sheriff Elect Lou Falco. Falco begins his new position Jan. 1.

“I would have preferred to say farewell with the knowledge that all that we have created together was in place and functioning for the people of Rockland,” said Kralik. “I cannot do that tonight because of the proposed budget.”

The proposed budget cuts the transport unit from the sheriff department, along with an additional $3 million reduction in addition to the $1 million of cuts the department already came up with.  

He immediately said that he asks the legislators consider reviewing the narcotics task force and the intelligence unit.

“We closed down the narcotics task force and intelligence unit, this was senseless, but then to say that we’re going to close down the police division of the sheriff department would be illogical to the point of … danger,” said Kralik. “Any cut of this magnitude would make the county less safe. The only job I had over all these years is to protect all of us.”

Kralik then detailed what would happen if the budget passed as is with cuts to the following:

Transport

“By the removal of the transport unit, we will then have to send out 30 fulltime officers out of 69 in your police division. Those officers will have to take over the state-mandated core responsibility of transporting thousands of prisoners per year from corrections to court, to police stations, to correctional facilities, state penitentiaries ect.”

Those 30 officers will have to be shifted from somewhere else in the department. “That would take the road patrol completely out and plus officers from BCI.”

“If you take $1.2 million worth of police officers who have done an outstanding job of moving thousands upon thousands of prisoners for the past 20 years without incident, then exchange them for $5.2 million of” other officers. “What sense does that make?”

He added that those officers have no overtime or perks, “there’s nothing. They live with that salary. They’re happy to do it. They enjoy the work and have done it successfully. And then to take 30 police officers off the roads of this county to help the police department … is downright insane … then you have to ask town and villages to hire more police officers to patrol their areas.”

County Police Academy

Kralik said that the police academy would be cut in half because of the proposed budget.

“Those people who are the experts in our training facility are … going to half disappear. Here’s the problem. One half of that budget is from the towns and villages. You pay for it in your town and village taxes. Why weren’t they (the towns and villages) asked?”

$3M Cut

“The $3 million cut and if that were to happen, everything ceases,” said Kralik.

In addition to the elimination of the transport unit, the proposed budget would remove or reduce the:

• BCI and CSI Units: “No one will drive up to a house that’s been burglarized and take fingerprints or do any of the CSI (crime scene investigation). There will be severe reduction of our BCI services for our towns and villages.”
• Arson Squad:
• Computer Crime: “There will be nobody to go after those pedophiles … all 160-170 arrested pedophiles, everyone of them going to prison. That will cease all because of a budget proposal that makes no sense to me.”
• Bomb Disposal and Explosive Detection: “The bomb Squad will disappear. So no one is going to go to your schools if there is a bomb threat. No on is going to take care of the bomb if it exists, whether it be the Palisades Center or in a school”
• Mounted Unit: “They were 10-foot tall and … stood along side the police officers so that police officer had support that he needed when he was confronting some of the problems in those villages
• Marine Unit: Rockland would rely on Westchester and Yonkers for police issues in the Hudson River such as search and rescues and Tappan Zee Bridge problems.
• Polygraph Unit 

“They are well trained (these specialized units). We’ve spent millions of dollars on the best equipment that the country could afford given to us through grant money that we did not have to pay for.”

He added that three brand-new fully-outfitted SUVs that were given to the county would “go to waste” along with the elimination of the county’s homeland security program. He also said that they would be disqualified from several grants, which they shared with the police departments.

Towns/Villages May Need to Replace Services

Kralik said that the supervisors of the five towns originally created the sheriff department because they couldn’t provide certain police services anymore.

“As we disappear, we will have to be replaced,” said Kralik. “You can’t say to someone that there has been a murder but no BCI officer is going to show up. You can’t do that. You can’t say that there’s not going to be someone to do computer crime when a child is attacked on the internet by some predator. If a building’s burned down and you think there’s a suspicious fire, who’s going to (investigate?)”

“Who’s going to do it? It’s going to be your towns and villages,” continued Kralik. “You’re going to have to look at your towns and villages and watch as they have to grope and cope with this disaster. This budget proposal, you’re going to create 5-fold at the minimum in expenses to the towns and villages. The villages will probably have to get service through the towns and end up paying for it.”

He added that the training towns and villages would need for their officers would be expensive and will not happen overnight. His trained officers have years of experience.

“$400,000 less in revenue will be given to your towns and villages by the lack of our law enforcement for traffic on county roads and that includes 140 DWI arrests we took off the roads of Rockland last year.” Other services that would end included support services for special events:

• St. Patrick’s Day Parade: “There will be no sheriff’s office to assist the Orangetown police department. There will be no one there for the fireworks
• Weather emergencies: “There will be no one there for the horrific emergencies that we faced in Floyd and Irene

Kralik said that since the Sheriff Department took care of these services for the county, there was no need for towns to unnecessarily duplicate these services.

“(The towns and villages) They didn’t need to. We did it. And we did it for a fairly good price,” said Kralik. “We created a support system that our police departments took advantage of and were able to put their manpower where it was truly important: on the frontlines to protect you and your families and your homes. It has always been that way.”

Help from NYS Police?

Kralik took it upon himself to contact the New York State Police to find out, “honestly,” were they capable of patrolling Rockland and offering the services that may be cut from the budget.

“I asked honestly, … I wanted you (NYS Police) to be able to say to our legislators, our supervisors, our elected officials and our people the real ability of the NYS Police. In the end, … I have to say that safety comes first. If they can do it then so be it. I would have to live with that. As harmful as it may be for my people, if you have a way out take it.”

"The answer was obvious. They are decimated. They haven’t had a police academy in 3-4 years. They have hundreds and hundreds of state police officers now but they’re pulling back. There’s a good chance the Haverstraw Barracks will be closed shortly.”

“Rockland County will have no support other than their promise that when they (state police) get here, they’ll be here. But it will come at a price ... They will take a long time (to arrive) like they did before.”

There are two upcoming public hearings detailed in this . A second Patch article was published after this with statements from police chiefs and comments and questions from the legislators.